Research Guides: Finding Books at the University Library: Government Documents

Government Docs

The CSUS University Library selects and receives approximately 30% of designated Federal Depository items for its Government Documents Collection. In addition, the collection contains California State and Local government documents, as well as some from Canada and the United Nations. U.S. federal government documents are organized by the SuDocs system, created by the U.S. Superintendent of Documents (below).

Physical items in the Government Documents Collection are housed on the second floor of the library in microfiche drawers and on book shelves.

Government documents can easily be searched by adding "Gov Docs" as the location in OneSearch.

If what you are looking for is unavailable at the CSUS library, you may want to look into the Sacramento Federal Depository, which holds a copy of all materials published by the Government Publishing Office (GPO). Sacramento's repository is located downtown at the California State Library.

There are also many resources available online through the following databases:

U.S. Government Documents Catalog (Marcive)
Identifies publications (reports, maps, etc.) since July 1976 –present (full text since about 1993).
USA.gov: The U.S. Government's Official Web Portal
FirstGov.gov, the official U.S. gateway to all government information and connects you to millions of web pages–from the federal government, state governments, the DIstrict of Columbia, U.S. territories, local and tribal governments and to foreign nations around the world. Most of these pages are not available on commercial websites. FirstGov.gov is also a Spanish-language web portal accessing thousands of government resources–all in Spanish and developed by, and for, Spanish speakers.
Military & Government Collection (EBSCO)
Offering current news pertaining to all branches of the military and government, Military & Government Collection offers a thorough collection of periodicals, academic journals and related content.

Call Numbers

SuDoc: The US Government created its own system to classify government publications called the Superintendent of Documents system or SuDoc. Call numbers contain a combination of letters, numbers, decimals and colons. Call numbers begin with letters.

Call Numbers: The initial letter in the SuDocs call number represents the government agency that produced the document. In the example below, the call number starts with A, for Dept. of Agriculture (A 93.56:IUS-5 S). A93 is for the Economic Research Service, which is under the Department of Agriculture. The number following the period indicates the series or type of publication, and the rest of the number, following the colon, identifies the individual publication in that series.

SuDoc classification system

A - Agriculture Dept.

AE - National Archives

C - Commerce Dept.

C 3. Census Bureau

D - Defense Dept.

E - Energy Dept.

ED - Education Dept.

GA - General Accounting Office

GS - General Services Admin.

HE - Health & Human Services Dept.

HH - Housing & Urban Devel. Dept.